U.S. Pulls Staff From Lahore Consulate Over ‘Threats’

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LAHORE, Pakistan (AFP) – The United States has evacuated all non-emergency staff from its consulate in Pakistan’s second-biggest city Lahore, citing “specific threats” amid a worldwide alert over Al-Qaeda intercepts.

The U.S. State Department also reiterated a longstanding warning to U.S. citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Pakistan, in a statement issued late Thursday Washington time.

The move came as two fresh attacks, one on the edge of the heavily guarded capital Islamabad, marred the start of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr and highlighted the parlous security situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The restive southwestern city of Quetta, focus of a surge in sectarian bloodshed, suffered its second deadly attack in two days, while a security guard was killed in a foiled suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque on the outskirts of Islamabad.

In Quetta, gunmen shot dead nine worshippers as they left Friday morning prayers for Eid, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

A day earlier, a suicide bomber struck a police funeral in the city, killing 38 people in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

Violence has continued unabated in the country since its new government took office in June.

The closure of the U.S. consulate in Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, came amid heightened security measures in Islamabad, where police and soldiers were highly visible on the streets.

Police officer Nasir Mehmood told AFP a suicide bomber tried to attack a Shiite mosque in Bhara Kahu on the city’s northeastern edge, but was intercepted by a security guard.

“The guard opened fire on the bomber as he entered the mosque and killed him. He could not explode his jacket,” Mehmood said.

Another police official, Majeed-ur-Rehman, said a guard was killed in an exchange of fire with the bomber before the attacker was shot dead. Bomb disposal experts were later seen defusing a suicide vest taken from the man’s body.

The U.S. State Department said it ordered the pullout of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from the Lahore consulate as of Thursday.

“The Department of State ordered this drawdown due to specific threats concerning the U.S. Consulate in Lahore,” it said in a statement.

A security threat focused on the Yemeni affiliate of Al-Qaeda prompted the closure of 19 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Africa earlier this week.

But Meghan Gregonis, spokeswoman for the American embassy in Islamabad, said the Lahore move was in response to new information about a threat to the consulate there.

“We received information regarding a threat to our consulate in Lahore. As a precautionary measure we have undertaken a drawdown for all but emergency personnel in Lahore,” she told AFP, adding that it was unclear whether there was a link to the earlier threat.

The U.S. embassy and consulates in Karachi and Peshawar were closed Friday for the Eid public holiday but are expected to open again on Monday, she said. The Lahore mission was likely to remain closed and there was currently “no indication” of when it might reopen.

Despite Pakistan’s fractious alliance with the United States in the “war on terror”, anti-American sentiment runs deep in the country, fuelled in part by the CIA’s drone strikes against militants in the tribal northwest.